O Give thanks to the Lord of Lords: For His mercy endures for ever!

Finally have A Coward’s Solace Manuscript Ready For Someone Else to Read

What should I do now?

My Book is Ready for my Beta Reader

During the past three days I have been working diligently on the final draft of of my manuscript of my novel A Coward’s Solace: The Locket Saga Book III. This morning I formatted the book then went to Lulu.com and published a copy of the book for my first beta reader. When she’s done with it and tells me what she thinks is wrong with it, I will make more edits and pass it onto my second beta reader to discover her opinion. Again I will make edits. Then the book goes to get proofread by yet another person. In the meantime, I will have to determine the final cover for the book I am going to do something that I have not done before and allow my readers to help me choose that final cover. Once the beta readers work their magic and I have the final cover in place, at that point, the book will be ready for the general public to read.

The Lesson I had to Learn the Hard Way

In my first book of the Locket Saga When God Turned His Head, I thought that I could do all of my own editing and formatting, create my cover and everything would be perfect. That was certainly not the case. I discovered that no matter how many times I tried to edit my own work, I still missed errors that I had made. After reading and working with my manuscript for a long time, I was seeing the book as I thought it should read rather than the way that it actually read. I really needed another set of eyes to read over my work.

So now I use other eyes to show me what I missed. That is why my books are now going to beta readers. Rather than doing what many others do and send their books to beta readers who are far away, I am having local friends beta read it. I am also having the book printed out for the beta readers to read so that they can mark right on the page what is wrong. I am using one beta reader at a time as well so that I can consider one reader’s input before going to the next.

Not that I Get A Break Now

Just because my manuscript of A Coward’s Solace has been sent to my beta reader does not mean that I am done working the novel for now even. My next task will be to design four covers to share with my readers in a survey. This will not only allow me to get the best cover for my book, but it will also act as advertising that my book will soon be coming out. Another tip I have learned along the way about marketing my books.

In addition the work I still have to do on A Coward’s Solace I want to get ahead on my other writing projects on Bubblews, Hubpages, and here on my blog. Also, I want to start my newsletter up again.

Finally, if I want to write those other two books (and write the first draft of another on NaNoWriMo) this year, I will need to get started on them as well.

I Did Celebrate Though

To celebrate reaching this milestone, however, I ate a bowl of yogurt with fruit and lots and lots of whipped cream. After all, it is a time to celebrate! I finished editing my novel!

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Well congratulations on finishing the edits to this point. I’m right at that point myself, and will be turning mine over to the beta readers tomorrow. Exciting times call for short celebrations, and then it’s time to write again. 🙂